Picture frames and decorations are often attached to walls using tacks or small nails. This generally produces small holes in plaster or dry wall and increases the wear and tear of commercial and residential buildings. Adhesive strips have alternatively been used for securing articles to walls, but these are generally limited to single application uses.
The art has been replete with retaining and holding mechanisms for mounting various individual articles to walls. Yet none of these references has provided a sufficient suggestion to those of ordinary skill for improving the state of the art in multipurpose wall hanging mechanisms.
Taylor, U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,614, Jan. 30, 1973, relates to a flashlight holder which comprises a permanent magnetic on a flashlight body and a magnetically attractable bracket having a base with a resilient pad and an adhesive backing adapted to adhere the bracket to a wall surface.
Stemke et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,365,684, Jan. 23, 1968, discloses magnetic elements for mounting the loose end of shower curtains on an adjacent bath area. The magnetic elements are mounted in spaced relation on a side wall in a substantially vertical line between the top and bottom edges of an associated flexible shower curtain. The retaining means uses snap fasteners which secure the shower curtain and adhere the shower curtain to soft magnetic material which in turn can be adhered to a ceramic magnet attached to the shower wall.
Okamoto, U.S. Pat. No. 3,827,020, July 30, 1974, discloses a universal holding device for securing memorandum pads and paper sheets and the like on a supporting wall. This patent discloses the use of an adhesively secured magnetic element disposed within a flat coupling unit and a second magnetic element having the opposite polarity of the first magnetic unit for "sandwiching" paper or the like between the magnetic units.
Berger, U.S. Pat. No. 4,100,684, July 18, 1978, discloses a holding device for paper articles and writing instruments comprising a housing having a pair of compartments therein. A permanent magnetic is mounted on the housing and is removably received on a metallic bar which is adhesively mounted on a wall surface. This reference also discloses the use of release strips on the adhesive layer for protecting the adhesive layer prior to use.
McIntosh, U.S. Pat. No. 4,605,292, Aug. 12, 1986, discloses a mirror which can be mounted to a surface via a magnetic adhesively bonded support.
Belokin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,609,173, Sept. 2, 1986, discloses a magnetically attachable towel hanger including a hanger member having a male protrusion and an elongated, strip-like, one-piece supporting member of elastomeric material impregnated with a magnetized material for receiving the male hanger member.
While in the main, these support mechanisms are illustrative of the current state of the art in magnetic and adhesive supporting devices for limited uses, there remains a need for simplified multipurpose holding mechanisms for overcoming the current deficiencies associated with tack nails and adhesive wall-mounting strips.